NRL broadcast deal: Peter V’landys holds talks with streaming giants over NRL content
Peter V’landys’ recent trip to San Francisco could change how rugby league is consumed in the not so distant future, with the ARL Commission chair meeting with several streaming and tech giants.
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ARL Commission chair Peter V’landys will host club bosses on Friday morning at Rugby League Central with a bad case of jet lag but a much greater understanding of the broadcasting landscape, following a rapid-fire trip to the west coast of America where he held talks some of the world’s biggest streaming services.
It is understood V’landys and NRL commercial manager Andrew Abdo travelled to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where they met executives from streaming and tech giants Amazon Prime, Facebook and Google.
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V’landys has made the broadcasting deal his priority and while the game’s existing partners – the Nine Network and Fox Sports – remain in the box seat, there is also an acknowledgment that it would be remiss of the commission not to take a closer look at the streaming options, some of whom have begun to dabble in sport.
Only this week, Facebook announced a partnership with the International Cricket Council, while they already have deals in place to stream Major League Soccer matches, Major League Baseball and World Surf League events.
The biggest streaming player in recent times has arguably been Amazon Prime, who for the past two years have televised the NFL’s Thursday night football.
This year, they broke into the Premier League market when they bought the rights to 10 games in total. That decision was richly rewarded with a record number of subscriptions, no doubt whetting the company’s appetite for sporting content.
Enter rugby league. Or at least that is what V’landys and the commission hope, if not now, then certainly down the track as streaming services become bigger players in the Australian sporting market.
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V’landys’ trip to America signals an escalation in planning for broadcasting negotiations as the commission continue to map out a path forward – the current rights deal expires at the end of 2022.
The year may be in its infancy, and the existing deal may have a further two years to run, but there is an acknowledgment that the game needs to start planning now rather than later.
V’landys and chief executive Todd Greenberg have already publicly broached the idea of expanding to a 17-team competition, which would mean introducing a second side in Brisbane as early as 2023. Clubs and consortiums are falling over themselves to become the chosen one, although money will ultimately dictate whether expansion goes ahead.
The broadcasting deal isn’t the only major issue on the table. V’landys and the commission are yet to strike a new deal with Greenberg, who has a two-year option as part of his existing multimillion-dollar contract.
Both V’landys and Greenberg have insisted talks are ongoing, yet time is running out if a deal is to be done before the start of the premiership and the longer it takes, the more it fuels rumours that all is not well between the chair and his chief executive.
Amid the talk of tension, V’landys’ decision to head to America without the chief executive will do little to douse speculation that the game’s powerbrokers are weighing up Greenberg’s future at the helm of what is now a $500m business.
His cause would appear to have been helped by the latest financial figures, which revealed the game registered a $30m profit last season. As revealed in The Australian recently, that figure was roughly $3m above projections at the start of the year, an indication that Greenberg and his executive team have exceeded even their own expectations.
Yet clubs want more details around the financial data and are expected to turn up the heat on the NRL executive at Friday morning’s meeting, in the knowledge that the game has consistently returned big profits at the beginning of broadcasting cycles only to drop away after that.